The invention relates to a refrigerator comprising a thermally insulated refrigerator compartment, a refrigeration machine by means of which the refrigerator compartment can be cooled to a temperature below ambient temperature, and at least one door through which the refrigerator compartment can be accessed from outside.
Such refrigerators serve to store heat-sensitive goods or products. They are mainly used in households and the restaurant and food service industry, but also in the food-processing industry, in medicine and research. They generally consist of a thermally insulated refrigerator compartment that serves to store the relevant goods or products, and a refrigeration machine by means of which the refrigerator compartment is cooled. In principle, the refrigeration machine may have any desired mode of operation, but it will be a compression-type chiller in most cases or, less frequently, an absorption unit. All types of refrigerators are based on the following operating principle: heat is extracted from the interior of the refrigerator and transferred to the outside. Both of these actions are performed by means of heat exchangers. The typical operating temperature inside refrigerators used in households or the restaurant and food service industry ranges between 2° C. and 8° C.
Refrigerators for use in households and the restaurant and food service industry are available in different sizes. Besides refrigerators with a typical width of approx. 60 cm and a height of up to 2 m that are intended to be installed in private kitchens, comparatively, small refrigerators are mainly used in the restaurant and food services industry that may, for example, be placed on a counter so as to be well visible to the customers of the restaurant, enabling the latter to have a look at the cooled drinks and food items on offer. Such display refrigerators comprise a transparent door in most cases and are provided to the restaurants and dining establishments by the manufacturers of the drinks offered. As a rule, this is done for promotional purposes and the refrigerators are therefore provided with the trademark, the product logo, a promotional message, or the like of the manufacturer of the drinks in question. The drinks are increasingly stored in cans or bottles with a maximum content of 0.5 liters and the drinks are sold in the units defined by the content of the cans or bottles, for example.
The drinks stored in said cans or bottles are often offered in combination with other drinks in restaurants and dining establishments. For example, it is common practice to mix soft drinks and spirits to obtain mixed drinks. As a rule, the spirits are admixed in comparatively small amounts, so that one bottle of spirit is sufficient to prepare a correspondingly large number of units of the mixed drink. To achieve an optimum result, not just the cans or bottles of the soft drink but also the spirits must be kept refrigerated, which means that the bottle of spirit must be returned to the refrigerator each time a mixed drink has been prepared. As a consequence, the refrigerator must be opened and closed many times, which causes warm ambient air to flow into the refrigerator compartment of the refrigerator, so that the chiller units of smaller refrigerators used in the restaurant and food service industry will often be unable to ensure a constant low temperature inside the refrigerator due to their compact design and low refrigeration capacity.
Another drawback of conventional refrigerators, especially in the restaurant and food service industry, is that the refrigerator compartment and, in particular, the arrangement of the shelves inside the refrigerator compartment is optimized to accommodate a largest possible number of cans or bottles of the same size, which causes problems if in addition the bottle of spirit mentioned above is to be placed in such a refrigerator, for example.
While it would be possible to use separate refrigerators to store the cans or bottles of drinks and the spirits, this requires the restaurant or dining establishment to invest more in equipment on the one hand and increases the amount of labor to be done by the service staff on the other. The use of two or more separate refrigerators is also inconvenient if a supply of cans or bottles of the soft drink as well as a bottle of spirit are to be provided in a refrigerated state to people who are located in the restaurant in question but outside the bar or counter area, e.g., in a VIP area of the restaurant, at a table, on a stage, or at a mixing desk or the like. The same is true for private homes or private events.